Immortal (14 page)

“So literal! Well, there’ll be things to see later,” the Wanderer chortled, and when I looked back up, he was gone, with his laughter still ringing in the barn.

Chapter
9

THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE
to find Rachel standing over me, staring. Her auburn hair was neatly combed back into a single long braid that she’d wound around the back of her shapely head, emphasizing her slim white neck. She wore a simple sleeveless yellow
giornea
over her green
gonna.
“I’m going to teach you how to read and write, Luca Bastardo,” she said, in her serious way. In one hand she held a small wooden board with squiggles carved into it; in the other hand, she held a wax tablet. “Get up. We’re starting now.”

“Right now?” I sat up slowly, dislodging the fat gray barn cat and wiping stray pieces of straw off my face. The air was cool and pearly gray, as if the sun was just under the horizon. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“Papa does. Come by the window, there’s better light here. We don’t have much time before breakfast and I want to show you the letters. Papa says you’re clever and that you’ll learn quickly. We’ll see.” She sat down by the window. I kicked the blanket away and went to sit beside her, but not too close. Her presence unnerved me. She was a girl but on the brink of being more than that, and that something more floated around her like rose perfume. She was all soft rounded lines, soft red-brown hair, and not-so-soft self-confidence. I wasn’t used to girls like her. I wasn’t used to any girls, really. I was getting more nervous by the second.

“Your father said I was clever?” I asked. I was pleased by the compliment, but it made me feel more tentative, because now I had something to measure up to. No one had ever expected much of me before. Silvano had thought the worst of me, Giotto had thought the best of me, and patrons had expected only that their lust be slaked.

“Uh-huh, Papa thinks you’re probably the lost son of a nobleman. Sit here, or you won’t be able to see,” she ordered, pointing to a spot closer to her. I scooted closer. She held the board so I could see its face. “This is
la tavola,
the hornbook. I’ll show you the letters, and then you’ll copy them on the wax tablet, with this.” She showed me a small implement like a sharpened stick. “I don’t have a quill and ink and parchment for you, so we’ll have to do it this way. I’ll teach you
rotunda,
which is the easiest form of script.”

“Rotunda?” I asked, staring at her mouth, which was pink-lipped and full.

“Yes, because the letters are rounded!” she snapped, and I could tell her patience was already wearing thin. I took my eyes off her disturbingly pink mouth and trained them on the tavola, sat straighter, and sucked in my stomach. She went on, “When you’ve filled up the wax tablet, you’ll smooth it out again.”

“Fill up the tablet?” I repeated stupidly.

She gave me a sardonic look from dark eyes much like Mrs. Sforno’s. “I would rather find my father right about you than my mother, but so far, you’re not impressing me, golden hair or no. Maybe you’re the lost son of an idiot.”

“I’ll try harder.”

“See that you do. Now, this is the alphabet.” She pointed to the squiggles.

“That’s a cross,” I said, pointing to the first mark on the hornbook. I was glad to know something, anything, though I was surprised to find the mark of a cross in the home of a Jew. “I thought Jews didn’t revere the cross?”

“Christians think if they show us enough crosses, we will see their truth, give up our ancestral beliefs, and convert,” Rachel said, her voice wry and delicate. “Now, for every sound there’s a letter in the alphabet. Let’s start with your name. What sound does it begin with?”

“Bas?” I offered.

“Bastardo isn’t your name, and that’s more than one sound,” she said. “Try again.”

“Bastardo is my name,” I argued, though softly, because I wanted to please her.

“No, it isn’t, it’s sort of a description because you don’t know your parents. Think,
Ll
uca,” she said, emphasizing the first sound.

“Lll?”
I offered.

“Good. That’s the letter
l.
It looks like this.” She showed me the
l.
“Now you.” She put the wax tablet on my lap and then laid the cutting tool in my hand. I was looking at her pink mouth again instead of her hand and I immediately dropped the tool. She clucked her tongue.

“I’ll get it,” I said hastily, diving onto the floor. The tablet flew up in the air and Rachel caught it with an impatient exclamation while I scrabbled between the floor slats until I’d retrieved the cutting tool. I sat up with a foolish grin. “Here it is!”

The lesson wasn’t long, but it was unbearable. I couldn’t do anything right. Every time I attempted to copy Rachel’s letters, I dropped the tablet or the tool, or I said something stupid. I persistently copied her small fine letters backward. My hand of its own volition reversed the letters, making her cluck and mutter. I squirmed with despair. It was my first lesson in the power women have over men, though we men may wield the greater power out in the world. Later in my life I was to encounter the greatest power a woman wields: her love. But that was more than a century into the future, and on this day, I could only exclaim with relief when the lesson finally came to an end.

“That’s enough for today, Stupido—I mean, Bastardo,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. She tucked the tavola under her arm. “We’ll try again tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll do better.”

“Maybe the day after tomorrow?” I asked hopefully. “I need to rest. Reading is hard!”

“You need two lessons a day, not rest,” she sniffed, and flounced out of the barn, leaving me with the cutting tool clutched in my sweaty palm. I looked down at it and thought of Geber, who had asked me to bring him something today. Now I had something.

THE DOOR TO GEBER’S APARTMENT SWUNG OPEN,
and threads of blue smoke trickled out, like fingers on a hand averting the evil eye. I entered and crossed over to where he stood at one of his long, profusely laden tables. “I brought this for you—” I began.

“Hush!” he commanded, so I replaced the tool in the waistband of my hose and watched as he carefully poured a golden stream of liquid out of a heated pot into a cool one. To hold the hot pot, he wore thick leather gloves with extra leather pads stitched over each finger. “Do you know what I’m doing?”

“Is that gold?” I asked in response.

“It’s yellow, heavy, brilliant, extensible under the hammer, and has the ability to withstand assaying tests of cupellation and cementation,” he answered.

“Huh?”

“It’s gold.” He nodded. “I’m going to purify it with nitric acid.”

“Why?”

“Think, young man, what is the point of purification? To dissolve impurities, to reach quickly the perfection that nature intends…Purify me, O Lord, renew in me a right spirit,” he murmured. His eyeglasses had slid down his nose on a small sheen of sweat. “Do you remember what I told you yesterday about the purpose of alchemy, or will you grunt at me again?”

“You said, ‘Alchemy is the search for what not yet is, the art of change, the quest for the divine powers hidden in things,’” I quoted.

“Very good, no grunting. Do you understand what you’ve just said?”

“No, and I don’t feel like answering any more questions because I spent the morning appearing stupid to a girl who thinks she knows everything,” I said, sulking.

“A pretty girl?” Geber inquired with a laugh. I gave him a sour look and wandered over near the window, where gauzy curtains blew in to fan over a table’s surface. A small black-and-white dog with its legs amputated had been cut open in a long straight line from its throat to its penis, its skin cunningly held out around its body by pins so that the muscles underneath could be seen. I was intrigued by the way the muscles wove in and out together and fat veins ran over them like rivers over hills.

“You’ve cut this dog open so you could see its insides?”

“Yes, but don’t touch anything,” Geber warned. “It’s called a dissection. I’ve begun by opening the skin, and I’ll examine fascia and muscles and skeleton in turn.”

“Why are you doing a dissection to a dog?”

“There is so much to learn still, a hundred fifty years is not enough.” He sighed.

“Are you really so old?” I asked in wonderment. “How is that possible?”

“How is it possible for a person almost thirty years old to look like a boy of thirteen?” Geber glanced at me. “The thinking man questions himself first. For me, time is running out.”

“Maybe the physico can help you,” I said uneasily, dodging the issue of age and time, though I wondered at his secret source of knowledge that revealed to him my true age. I was determined to wrest answers from him, though I could tell he wouldn’t yield them easily. I would have to use ingegno and circumspection with him. Changing the subject, I asked, “Can you really turn base metal into gold?”

“Any good alchemist can,” he said dismissively. “A dog trained in alchemy could.”

“I want to learn how!”

“Soon. There are more important concerns, with the plague consuming me as I stand here. I want to create the perfect philosopher’s stone…. I want to revivify the dead, I want to generate a homunculus and to master nature and to avert chaos, that is the end of alchemy!”

His words were so fiery and ambitious, so unlike the false, pious platitudes mouthed by priests, that I was intrigued. “Isn’t nature everything? How can that be mastered?” I asked.

“Many agree with you: ‘art’s so naked and devoid of skill that never can he bring to life or make it seem that it is natural…He’ll ne’er attain to Nature’s subtlety though he should strive to do so all his life….’” Geber winked at me. “So it says in the story of the love of a rose.”

“I love roses,” I said, thinking of how pretty noblewomen held them in their gloved hands. “The color, the smell, the softness of their petals. They’re beautiful and good.”

“Do you not love painted roses more? As if from nature but with man’s artfulness applied to it?” Geber asked. I shivered, wondering if he really did know about my singular travels. He went on, “The mistake in your logic, if you can call what comes out of your thick head logic, is separating my work from nature. I do nature’s work for her and with her, so she submits to me.”

“If Giotto had painted a rose, I would love it more,” I admitted. “But Giotto turned to nature to find what was sacred and holy. He copied figures from nature, people as they really move in life. As God made man. It’s part of what gives his paintings such power and holiness.”

“Neither is alchemy an unholy art,” Geber replied. “Though demons attend it, as they do everything in the material world, even saints and magicians with thick-headed sons.”

“Do you know about my parents?” I demanded. “Who they are, what happened? Why did you call them magicians before?”

“What if I did?” Geber asked.

“Then you must tell me!”

“Must I? Would I really be helping you if I did?”

“Bastardo, Bastardo,” called Rosso, a faint voice from outside.

“I have to go,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me what I want to know?”

“Why would I deprive you of your journey? He who fails to keep turning the wheel thus set in motion has damaged the working of the world and wasted his life, Luca.”

“You speak in riddles,” I grumbled. “Everywhere I go lately, riddles. No answers!”

Geber smiled. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions.”

“Then tell me about yourself,” I said. Maybe if he revealed himself, he would let slip other answers. I said, “Where did you come from?”

Geber nodded slowly. “I belonged to a people who are mostly gone now. We were the guardians of secrets that the world needs, but isn’t ready for. We were trying to purify and perfect ourselves. We called ourselves Cathars.”

“Cathars, I’ve heard of them,” I said, remembering a long-ago day in the Oltrarno, an uncaring northerner, and a beautifully crafted vial of poison for blue-eyed Ingrid. “I heard that the Cathars were a heretical sect that the Church killed.”

“Not a heretical sect! One that possessed the secret teachings of the Messiah, for which the Church largely exterminated us,” Geber said bitterly. “The things we taught—direct experience of God, tolerance, purity, the equality of man and woman, unyielding devotion to the true ministry of Jesus—threatened the secular power that the Holy Roman Empire craves. There was no room for us in their corrupt doctrine of the lust for wealth, hate, and exclusion! They coveted our secrets and our treasures while pretending to worship the Lord of love!”

“Luca Bastardo!” called Rosso, more loudly and with exasperation.

“But Cathars still exist,” I said hurriedly. “Some were in Florence twenty years ago.”

“You want to know about the connection between your parents and my people.”

“I want to know who I am, where I came from, why I’m different from other people, and what it means! I want to know the secrets of my origins, and if I’m different even from my parents!”

Geber looked at me for a long moment. “The Cathars knew many secrets. We kept treasures. Our purity made us worthy. What makes you worthy, Luca?”

“I have struggled my whole life to answer that question!” I cried.

“Could it be that the struggle itself is your answer? That it’s not for me to shorten your quest?” Geber asked steadily. “Does not your personal quest progress history along toward its end, allowing men to be the swords with which spirit wages war? What, after all, is history: the great swaths of events or the sum of individual lives? Which is more important?”

“Luca, now!” Rosso shouted.

Geber and I regarded each other. I realized that, today, he would not answer my questions, except with questions of his own which I could not begin to answer. “You asked me to bring you something. Here.” I held up the sharpened stick and then laid it on the table.

“A pointed stick?”

“For copying letters into a wax tablet, a task which is purgatory on earth,” I said. Rachel’s merciless face flashed into my head. She was a hard mistress.

“An alchemical gift.” Geber looked pleased and surprised. “Thoughts transmuted into signs, which become spoken words and thoughts again: the richest alchemy…”

“Bastardo! Ufficiale!” Rosso called urgently. I waved good-bye to Geber and fled down the stairs. Rosso waited outside the door, nervously rubbing his hand through his bristly, balding red hair. We walked toward some bodies, dead condottieri, on the cobblestones. Three ufficiali on horseback cantered up to us. The two in the lead stared at me, and I stared back defiantly. I was free now. I didn’t have to drop my gaze and slink off like a guilty mongrel at the approach of the police. My boldness must have unsettled them, because they pulled back. The one in the rear drew his dancing horse alongside me, then spat at me. I looked up into Nicolo Silvano’s narrow face. For a moment, furious and appalled and a little terrified that some diabolical alchemist had reunited Silvano’s pneuma with his body, I saw his father’s mien. But then it was Nicolo, dressed in the red of a magistrate with an elaborate rolled cowl around his neck.